CHAPTER XL.
GODFREY AND SEPIA.
When the Redmains went to Cornwall, Sepia was left at Durnmelling, in the expectation of joining them in London within a fortnight at latest.
The illness of Mr.Redmain, however, caused her stay to be prolonged, and she was worn out with _ennui_.

The self she was so careful over was not by any means good company: not seldom during her life had she found herself capable of almost anything to get rid of it, short of suicide or repentance.

This autumn, at Durnmelling, she would even, occasionally, with that object, when the weather was fine, go for a solitary walk--a thing, I need not say, she hated in itself, though now it was her forlorn hope, in the poor possibility of falling in with some distraction.

But the hope was not altogether a vague one; for was there not a man somewhere underneath those chimneys she saw over the roof of the laundry?
She had never spoken to him, but Hesper and she had often talked about him, and often watched him ride--never man more to her mind.

In her wanderings she had come upon the breach in the ha-ha, and, clambering up, found herself on the forbidden ground of a neighbor whom the family did not visit.